Has private life gone out of fashion?

It’s been common practice to publish the private writings of authors after their death.

Whether it’s their diaries or letters between family and friends, giving readers access to the inner workings of these writers is valuable for deepening our understanding of their work.

There are, of course, obvious ethical concerns when it comes to publicising this kind of writing. But something that fascinated me was coming across the idea that celebrated authors might be conscious of the possibility that their private writing would eventually reach the public eye.

This first came to mind when I was reading a selection of Virginia Woolf’s letters. (Is it even a Kulturalist newsletter if Virginia Woolf goes unmentioned?) In one of these letters, she mentions her awareness that her diaries will likely be published owing to her prominence even at the time she was alive.

There’s an article called “The Literary Diary as Genre” by Bruce Merry that considers diaries to be something easily taken for granted. He writes that diaries are frequently “found after the death of a writer or a famous person” and published for the sake of “throwing light” on their artworks. Thinking about literary diaries in this way raises the question of what this genre’s future is in a world where it feels like having a truly private life is a near impossibility.

Now, I’m not here to antagonise social media and its impact on our lives. Nor am I here to say that the concept of having a private life is entirely obliterated. But it is a reality that — with the growing presence of authors, artists, and other creatives on social media — we have more direct access to their lives than ever before. In fact, these days a lack of a social media following can be seen as a red flag from the perspective of, for example, a publisher.

Since we’ve entered the age of Instagram Live, Twitter Q&As, and media more broadly, it’s become unlikely that we’ll have to wait for the posthumous publication of diaries to find out about a person’s creative process or the behind-the-scenes of their work.

So the question is will the literary diary genre soon become a thing of the past? Or will personal writing begin capturing a new kind of private life: one that reflects an inner world characteristic of our contemporary time?

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